I agree. That's why you have instrumentalists and composers. The composer's job is to give them something to play while the instrumentalists job is to have the technique to play it.

Think of it like entrepreneur and employees. The composer is the mastermind who hires different types of people in order to combine their efforts into one goal. They may not be the best at playing one instrument but they know a lot about each and every one so that they understand how to utilize them in harmony.

The instrumentalist is like the employee except they're much more specialized in their work. They may not be the best composers but without them it wouldn't be possible for the music to be played in the first place.

Without the composer the instrumentalist has no job just like without the entrepreneur of a company an employee has no work. You need both in this world to retain a balance.

It's called flow state by some people, and I am a believer in it. Sometimes I get to working on a track, and it just starts to come together and before I know it, I've been working on it for 5+ hours.

That's something a little bit different. From what I recall regarding the string and coin thing it was something regarding brain waves and neuroscience. When we are awake our mind only has access to the conscious side and is usually filled with a plethora of different thoughts. When we're falling asleep though thinking begins to cease and the subconscious begins to take over.

Well anyways, apparently the "subconscious" part of our mind is capable of working on ideas in the back of our mind and in order to access those ideas it's necessary to silence the mind from incessant thinking. That "silence" usually happens in the stages right before we're awake and asleep which is why that inventor/scientist did what he did. He claimed to have discovered some of his greatest ideas/solved some of his greatest problems by taking short naps and intentionally waking himself up with the coin right before he fell asleep.

Don't know whether any of it is actually true tbh.

Crossing the line when it comes to music...

Kind of a confusing question but I think this applies much more to artists who already have an established sound. When porter robinson released the worlds album that's what I would consider crossing the line. The music off of the worlds album is pretty different compared to the music he had made previously. I'm sure he lost some of his previous fanbase when he crossed that line. However, he also gained a whole new fanbase because of it.

For me personally, I do have certain musical standards for the music I write. The chord progression needs to be beautiful. To me writing a song without a beautiful chord progression is unacceptable because if I don't like the chord progression then I won't like the song.

I don't really think drawing a line is the best way to describe what you're asking though. You can really limit yourself by drawing lines in music but if that's because you're trying to zoom in on a specific sound then that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Pretty good analysis of true colors guys. Chord progressions with borrowed chords/picardy thirds have a tendency to be up for reinterpretation. I don't really thing that's necessary though. Addicted to a memory is also one of my favorite chord progressions. Zeds's chord progressions are pretty much trademarked with those picardy thirds.

Dominant Phyrgian is definitely an yngwie trademark. It's fun to incorporate when substituting a iii chord for a III chord in the harmony. ^.^

And when you finish it send it to me because those plucked chords are sexier than any college chick I have seen today. 

Also, about your sleep thing Lydian, quincy jones once said that the best time for him to be creative was in between sleep and being awake. People have made jokes about him sleeping, when he was just in that transition state thinking.

Something to consider as you listen along the way.

Interesting because now that you mention it I recall some famous person with a similar habit. I can't remember who it was but basically after working hard to solve a problem they would nap on it by holding some sort of coin attached to a string. When they fell asleep the the coin was meant to fall from the string and wake them up. Somehow this resulted in this specific persons answers or ideas coming to them. Bugs me that I can't remember who it was.

I don't know whether it has to do with the state of mind I'm in while I'm sleeping but for some reason it's much easier to focus when I'm in that relaxed state.

I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to remakes haha - I think attempting fully accurate remakes is amazing practice for training your ear both musically and production-wise. It forces you to figure out your own techniques in order to achieve certain sounds or overall atmospheres

I think you managed to get not only the notes but the mix as well. Is there an acapella out there of the vocals? The vocaloid sounds literally just the same. Even the harp & main lead motif. I had seen that the main lead motif was a preset somewhere in FL studio but I never took the time to figure out how to recreate it in other daws. I think you got it spot on,

I've downloaded the pomodoro one app on my computer which I think has been helping a lot lately. I still haven't completely gotten over the distractions though. I feel like if I focus on something and I'm able to rise up to the challenges then I can do it for a longer period of time. However, if I'm working on something and for whatever reason I can't figure out what's wrong then I have more of a tendency to give in to distractions. Which is bad because I basically start procrastinating from the issue in the first place.

The "fix sheets" thing sounds like a really good idea. I used something like that in the last track that I finished. What I did is I bounced the track out and listened to it in my ipod at night. For some reason my ears are much more in tune to mixes right before I fall asleep. It's usually easy to notice which elements just sound "off" so I wrote those down and worked on them the next day.

it's easier to be productive when you're not just wandering aimlessly through your DAW.

THIS as well. My goodness this couldn't be any more relevant to my situation atm. I like to do the arrangement and mixing separately sometimes switching in between the two so sometimes I'll skip certain mixing issues to focus on something else. Kinda like the way you skip questions on a test if you don't know the answer. Sometimes I forget which problems I skipped though so writing them all down on a piece of paper would make it easier to just do it instead of wandering in my DAW.

I use something similar to focus and antisocial known as "self-control". I may switch over to one of the other two though. I like how antisocial comes with a preset of websites already enlisted.

I honestly can't wait to incorporate this into my workflow. Thanks a lot mussar. Really great post.